


And Then There Was One

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Thor (Comics), Thor - All Media Types, Thor: God of Thunder
Genre: Bad Ending, Blood, Blood and Gore, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Character Death, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Future Fic, Gen, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, Rage, Sad Ending, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Against the fanatical passion and hatred of Gorr the God-Butcher, no divine being on any world could stand.</p><p>In the end, centuries later, Thor was the last god alive in any realm.</p><p>His brother Loki was the second-to-last.</p><p>(Set during Old Thor's future during "Thor: God of Thunder - The God-Butcher")</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then There Was One

**Author's Note:**

> So, "The God Butcher" is probably one of my favorite Marvel collections ever, and I greatly look forward to finally getting my hands on "Godbomb". It probably says something that what resulted is probably the bloodest and certainly one of the shortest fics I've ever written, not to mention the first thing I've written for the comics - even over Journey Into Mystery! 
> 
> It was inspired by a few points - first, that when Thor is finally about to break under Gorr's torture in the cave, and Gorr offers to kill "a family member" he hates first. You just *know* that Loki was the first name that came to mind in that moment! Second, the bad future with Old Thor. Probably because of my overall fondness for Loki, I found myself generally curious as to how he died, how it happened.
> 
> Thus, this fic was born I can't say I hope you enjoy, because it's horrible and sad, but I certainly hope it's up to snuff, if nothing else.

Thor was the last god in the universe.

Loki was the second-to-last.

In truth, it was amazing what the apparently inevitable slaughter of your entire kind could do to bring the remnants of a dysfunctional family together. They found one another again in the gathering darkness and huddled around the dying embers that were the ruins of the once-shining city. They talked of times gone by because they both knew that there was no point in making any plans for the future.

Thor never told Loki that his brother’s name had been the first offering on his tongue when he’d been ready to break beneath the God-Butcher’s torture all those centuries ago. Loki never told Thor that he’d ceased to be the boy Thor thought he was a long time ago. What would have been the point? They still fought, yes, because they were still brothers. Even the fights were a comfort now, however. They were a break from the silence, and in between verbal sparring, Loki filled the void with stories from memory and make-believe.

All they could offer one another now was company. They didn’t even bother to guard one another against Gorr’s snarling black hounds that howled throughout the night and were ever clawing their way closer. Death, after all, would be a release from this quiet end, and it was only the shame of surrender in the eyes of Hel and Valhalla both that kept them from taking their own lives. When the battles came, they only fought, as each knew best how to fight. When there were no more foes to fight that day, they returned the dead, crumbling dark halls, there to drink and feast on a world’s worth of resources now left only for two.

Loki wasn’t always there, of course, although his presence sometimes felt like the only thing that could possibly break up the monotonous waiting of Thor’s existence. Sometimes Thor would simply wake to find him gone. Such was and had always been Loki’s way, and Thor found himself perversely comforted by it now at the end. He never feared that his brother was dead. Loki was too clever and had survived too much to die anywhere but here, anywhere but at Thor’s side.

Even now, he couldn’t believe that his brother would do that to him. He couldn’t believe that, after everything, Loki would leave him to enter Valhalla alone.

Loki always returned, however. Sometimes it was years later, sometimes decades, but he would announce himself by singing bawdy songs while cutting down guard dogs or presenting Thor with a bottle of some alien brew that tasted sweet as honey after endless nights of cold mead. Loki left, and then Loki returned, and the cycle of living as well as surviving continued again.

Until, like all things, it ended.

Thor only knew what had happened when Gorr himself came out with his hounds one cold morning. Just the sight of his oldest foe filled Thor with a mix of bone-deep terror and thrilling ecstasy. He wondered if today might finally be the end, but knew that the God-Butcher would never be so merciful. Something else had happened. Something else was wrong.

He hefted Mjolnir and prepared to fight anyway. He strode bravely with his head held high down from the steps of his dead palace, his gaze locked on his old foe. Even at this distance he could see that Gorr showed no fear, and certainly no respect. He hadn’t even hefted his weapon. Instead, he’d brought what looked like a large ball, barely big enough to fit in his palm as he tossed it up and down.

Then, as the ball came down once more, Thor got a proper look at the tangle of grey hair trailing behind it.

This time, when Gorr caught Loki’s severed head, he turned it so the empty eyes could gaze up at Thor. Thor, in turn, stared down at the _thing_ as though it was the only thing in the world, because for so very long, it had been.

The ends of his hair, long gone grey as Thor’s had gone white, were felted and matted with blood from the stump of his own neck. Otherwise, his face showed far less damage than many other of Gorr’s victims. It was all to make it as recognizable as possible, of course. Otherwise, Thor might have had some hope that what he was looking at wasn’t real, was just a trick or a lie like Loki had always been so gifted with. Like this, with the state the head had been left in, there could be no doubt. Even the place where his neck had been severed was clean, as though it had been sliced with a scalpel. All the same, there was enough left for Thor to see the marks of the garrote dug into the pale flesh. Enough for Thor to see that his brother had died silenced and choking.

There was no condemnation in the empty eyes of the second-to-last god in the universe, even though there should have been. Even if Thor might have wished there was, because that would have been _something_. Condemnation for letting him die alone would have at least been emotion, and emotion was a sign of life. There was nothing, however, in the face if his last living faimly, not even the pain Thor knew he would have suffered. Loki’s mouth hung slack, his silver tongue reduced to just a stump, and his eyes were lidded, dark, and empty. There was nothing left of the body.

Nothing left of his brother.

These were the minute details he absorbed, with an almost perverse fascination and desire to know _how_ and _why_. This was what he saw, all in a scant few seconds that stretched on endlessly. Thor only came back to himself, back to this damned, empty world, when one of the God-Butcher’s black beasts leaped for the wrist of his flesh arm, jaws clamping tight around bone. Thor whirled with a snarl, bringing Mjolnir around in an arc to crush its skull, but there were more. There were always more.

“You would be proud of him, Thor,” Gorr shouted, over the barks and growls of his minions. “He lasted twenty-one days before he surrendered to me. You only lasted seventeen! Because I knew it was so very important to him that he surpass you, I made sure he lasted five more. He died with your name on his lips, Thunderer. Do you think he was begging you to save him…or offering you in his place?”

Thor’s howl mingled with those of the dogs. There were no words in it. There could be no words for what he felt in that moment, nothing to truly express his agony and rage. He charged for Gorr, for this _monster_ that somehow always found something more to take from him. In that moment, for the first time in almost eight hundred years, Thor didn’t charge with the intent to die. Instead, his purpose was nothing more than the intent to _slaughter_.

It was not to be. It never was. The God-Butcher’s monsters closed around Thor in a black tide of teeth and claws, not to kill him, just to stop him as Gorr turned around and walked away.

Contemptuously, his oldest enemy tossed Loki’s head back over his shoulder. It his the ground and rolled, end over end, and as Thor struggled through the hounds, he saw a few straggles waiting to pounce turn to sniff at the head instead.

“They might still be hungry,” Gorr called, without bothering to look back at Thor in his grief, his disgust, his rage and hopelessness. “Their last meal was a little lean.”

Thor tore the black dogs to pieces with his bare hands to get to the tattered, bloody head and bear it safely back to the castle. They didn’t make it easy for him, but in absence of wrapping his hands around their master’s throat, their presence to sate his rage on was almost a blessing to break up the monotony of hell. Nothing could have stopped him from bringing Loki back to the castle one last time, and so nothing did. Thor was bleeding and torn from dozens of wounds he didn’t even feel, but he walked with his head held high and his brother’s head cradled reverentially in his hands.

He thought he’d forgotten tears when he’d buried his last child.

That night, as Thor walked the halls of the palace searching for something that would burn, he felt the tears in his eyes more keenly than the wounds weeping a blood behind him.


End file.
